The Feminae database presents images of medieval art with descriptions, data, and subject indexing. Each thumbnail picture has a link to a higher quality image often with a zoom view and added content from a museum. Images included represent women and gender 450 to 1500 C.E. in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Beginning in June 2012 we have highlighted each month a newly added image that is rich in documentary evidence or iconographic significance.
As images build up in the database, users can browse for aggregated evidence. The Donor field groups people together in the categories layman/men, laywoman/women, female religious and male religious. The Current Location field allows users to see artwork that is all housed in the same museum. Image records are integrated with all the other Feminae content, so that a search on Mary Magdalen will include results for essays, journal articles, translations, book reviews, and images (which come at the end of the list which is sorted by date).
Feminae Research Assistants
Feminae Research Assistants:
Jonathan Sudo worked on Feminae in summer 2019. He is majoring in History and East Asian Studies at Haverford College.
Drew Forte began working on images in Spring 2018. He has a particular interest in the occult and magic as represented in medieval art.
Jessica Urban researched and wrote about images from fall 2016 through fall 2017. She concentrated on archaeology and material culture. She majored in Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College.
Bill Ristow is working on manuscript images during the 2015-16 academic year. He is majoring in history and writing his senior thesis on medieval kingship with reference to Wace's Roman de Rou and Henry II.
Rachel Davies worked on the brass rubbings during the 2013 summer session for the exhibit Lasting Impressions. During 2015-16 she is concentrating on entries concerning Spanish art.
Leigh Peterson worked on images during the Fall 2012 through Spring 2015 academic years. She was an undergraduate student who majored in art history at Bryn Mawr College. She was an intern at the Cloisters Museum during summer 2013.
Shannon Steiner added images during the summer and fall of 2013. Shannon is a doctoral student in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. She holds a B.A. from Temple University (2009) and M.A.s from The University of Texas at Austin (2011) and Bryn Mawr College (2013). Her research focuses on the visual culture of saints' cults and the role of art in forming community and gender identities in Byzantium.
Sarah Celentano worked on the initial 300 image records. She is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the visual culture of female monastic communities with a specialization in twelfth-century German-speaking areas. Her dissertation, "Embodied Reading as Political Action in the Hortus deliciarum," will explore the textual and visual responses in the twelfth-century Hortus deliciarum to papal schism and imperial challenges to Church authority. Additional areas of examination will be the use of medieval mnemonic techniques, and conduits of artistic exchange between northern and southern Europe.